Reading Response: Atwood
Atwood’s The Year of the Flood is a dystopia, so it is always interesting to see what authors do with gender and gender roles in these novels. In this futuristic world, it seems that gender relations have only gotten worse from the present day.
Toby’s experiences working at SecretBurger are horrible and worse off than what goes on currently. Though there is certainly sexual harassment in the workplace, it is possible to report it to the police or file a lawsuit and know that something can be done. She has absolutely no choice, and no one cares if she lives or dies. I wonder if this is because she is a female, making it a gender issue, or if it’s because she is not part of a Compound, and therefore not important.
It was also interesting to note the amount of casual sexist insults that are used by the boys Shackie and Croze, who also persistently bother Amanda, saying she “owes” them sex. Sex seems to be something Amanda knows how to trade.
There is clearly a lot of prostitution going on, although it seems as if the girls are treated better than one can imagine they are being treated today. They wear the body suits to protect them from disease, and aren’t supposed to be harmed.
This world that Atwood portrays, although futuristic, seems to be a dangerous place for women, more so than men. Perhaps a lot of it is supposed to serve as social commentary on the conditions of women now. The sexism is more blatant, the violence more prevalent, and the prostitution more accessible, but it all seems eerily familiar.
Technology Diary 4: Gyms
One thing I’ve noticed is that my gym is basically split by gender. There seems to be a consensus in the gym that the first floor is where everyone goes so both men and women are comfortable exercising there, but when you go to the second floor, you will very rarely see a women there even if the machines on the first floor are all taken. Unfortunately I never use the second floor myself even though there are a lot of machines up there that I enjoy using. The only time I’ll see women go upstairs is to get to the classrooms on the side of the second floor.
I would say the second floor of my gym is somewhat intimidating. I would say it isn’t due to the machines upstairs being harder are more for men. If anything I would say it’s because they put all the heavy weights upstairs and all the light weight downstairs. So the heaviest weight you’ll find on the first floor will probably be around 10 pounds yet when you get upstairs it’s all 20 – 100 pounds. The way things are set up splits the gym up by gender because the men will more likely want to use the heavier weights. Even if a woman wanted to use one of the heavier weights I feel like they wouldn’t in gym just because the testosterone level is intimidating upstairs. There will be so many guys in the corner with their weights and absolutely no women on the second floor, not even on the treadmills that often women just go back downstairs because they feel out of place. I remember I went with my cousin to try out the machines on the second floor and I left pretty fast just because the atmosphere on the second floor felt awkward to me.
Even though there are more guys on the second floor exercising, you will always find more women in the classroom.Whenever I go to my yoga class there will only be one or two guys maximum in a class of more than 20. I think it’s interesting to see how some people make not take part in some activities simply because they think that it isn’t for their gender in a way. I think the gym creates more of a gender barrier on what the men and women should participate in and causes people to flock only to certain things. When I took yoga in high school for example where the setting was more loose, half my yoga class would be filled with guys simply because they just naturally signed up for it and there wasn’t this gender specific barrier that was established.
Reading Response: Atwood
As someone with minimal experience with Science Fiction or Fantasy literature, delving into Margaret Atwood’s The Year of the Flood has been really invigorating for me. Familiarizing myself with the foreign vernacular, behaviors and belief systems of The Gardeners keeps me on my feet; as I read I’m continuously adding to a mental Venn diagram comparing their society with ours. And yet, despite the challenge of keeping track of all these distinctions, the strangeness of their world has an exciting and liberating effect on me as a reader; I like that it provides such an easy escape from reality.
Still, I’m conflicted by the appeal of The Gardener’s lifestyle and what I consider their detestable belief systems. In other words, the anarchist farmer in me would love to squat an abandoned building decked out with a rooftop garden, beehives, mushroom dens, etc., living simply and harmoniously with my environment. And yet, I don’t think I’d tolerate the social atmosphere of The Gardener community for more than a few days. My skepticism towards organized religion surely plays a part, but I’m critical for deeper reasons as well: the drastic power imbalance and social stratification of members, for one, and the fact that this hierarchy is corroborated by their insistence on “avoiding the original sin of desiring too much knowledge” (102). In other words, faith and acceptance are encouraged over epistemological endeavors.
Another alarming aspect of Gardener lifestyle is their upholding of superficial gender binaries. Even though we have only encountered female narrators so far in the novel, it is clear that men are the subjects of their community and women the objects. Indeed, this characteristic highlights some of the more frustrating similarities between our cultures, which for fantasy’s sake, I would have hoped had been overcome in theirs. I’m grateful, at least, that Toby, one of the primary narrators, shares my skepticism and resistance to their indoctrinating ways, as is revealed by her response to the following interaction with fellow Gardener Nuala:
“You’ll want to grow your hair,” said Nuala. “Get rid of that scalped look. We Gardener women all wear our hair long.” When Toby asked why, she was given to understand that the aesthetic preference was God’s. This kind of smiling, bossy sanctimoniousness was a little too pervasive for Toby . . . (46)
Indeed, Gardener values are rife with contradiction. For example, while they manipulated Toby’s fear from her sexual enslavement from Blanco to get her to join their cult in the first place, once a member, their addressing of sexual harassment shifted toward utter laxity. When Toby approaches Pilar, with whom she has a relatively close bond, about Mugi sexually assaulting her, Pilar’s response is coded and non-committal: “We never make a fuss about such things . . . There’s no harm in Mugi really. He’s tried that on more than one of us – even me, some years ago . . . The ancient Australopithecus can come out in all of us. You must forgive him in your heart” (104). Because Pilar’s response is seriously problematic in a wide variety of ways, I will focus simply on its reflection of The Gardener’s hypocritical tendencies. They show zero tolerance for meat-eating, for instance, despite such behavior being present in our Australopithecines ancestors, but non-consensual sexual acts warrant, in their opinion, not just acceptance, but forgiveness.
Technology Diary (10/10)
Intersectionality is (now thanks to the third-wavers) a staple of feminism, but this doesn’t just include women of color, ethnic minorities, and lower classes. This also includes women who don’t fit into the media’s body standards of “beauty”. Unfortunately, for the women who are plus-sized, it’s hard to find clothes that are of quality and fit well. There have been start up companies who keep these women in mind, but it’s hard without funds to get good advertising to gain visibility and target this group.
I’ve noticed that even in the plus-sized section, the mannequins are no better accurate representations than the stick thin mannequins in the standard sized clothing sections. In fact, the plus size mannequins look more like the average woman. The reason for that is plus sized mannequins are just standard sized mannequins’ measurements magnified. In any case, the proportions are not accurate and doesn’t speak to the many different body shapes of the plus sized community. The inaccurate and rather lazy modeling of the mannequins leads to an industry filled with ill fitting clothing and baggy pieces as cop-outs. I mean, why would a fat woman want to accentuate her body’s curves? Shouldn’t she just feel ashamed and want to hide her body? (Please read with sarcasm).
Two fashion design students came up with the most accurate size 24 mannequin the industry has seen before. Even though every woman is built differently and retains fat in different parts of her body, they discovered (by using thousands of 3D imaging scans of plus sized women) that the pear shaped body was the most frequently found. These students released a small collection of Baroque inspired clothing for plus sized women called Rubens’ Women that celebrate curves rather than try to hide them.
It seems counter-intuitive that the fashion industry ignore the plus sized buyers since they have 28% of the market’s purchasing power and it’s a gold mine since it remains relatively untouched by designers. It only perpetuates the idea that fat women should be ashamed of their bodies and should not be allowed to take pride in what they wear and have the right to follow fashion. But, if more designers start paying attention to this target, even if just for profit’s sake, it’ll be a huge win for the community and for the intersectionality of fashion.
Reading Response (10/3)
Although at times I felt Donna Haraway’s “A Cyborg Manifesto” was a bit far-reaching, her main point that we are all cyborgs was an unconventional twist on how we interact with machinery and technology. I have to agree that since we are so dependent on technology that we’ve become half-organic, half-machine in the way that we cannot function as a society without either half. The half-machine part of us is our constant connectedness to our electricity, the Internet, mass media, etc. Even the technologically basic pen is something we interact with that suddenly makes us a cyborg.
Haraway looks onto the near future (or maybe even the present) of how today’s machine’s are disturbingly lively compared to us, who are disturbingly inert. The common belief is that machine could never overtake man, but our social anxiety on the subject says otherwise. Just the number of movies about machine takeover speak to our fear that one day our own Frankenstein’s monsters will seek vengeance upon us. One of my favorite movies, “The Matrix”, is built on the premise that in a post-apocalyptic world, machines have taken over the world and are breeding humans for energy. But, if man builds machine, how is it possible for them to ever become self-sufficient and sentient? Well, from an arguably paranoid perspective, as machine is replacing man’s work and efforts we are increasingly relying on their performance and not our own. Instead of fearing the day the machine takes over, we should fear the day that machine no longer works. As we continue to exacerbate the imbalance between nature and technology, it becomes more obvious how we pit them against one another.
Judith Halberstam’s “Automating Gender” raises a similar issue concerning cybernetics. Her take on Apple’s logo of the bitten into apple as the digitalization of knowledge as sin, the bite becoming the byte, was enlightening. In this way, both Haraway and Halberstam claim that the cyborg is gendered female yet she represents intelligence, reason, and innovation. The way gender and technology is linked seems to be by fear of the “other”. In the patriarchy, woman and technology are bastardizations of men, inferior and irrational yet controllable to a certain extent. Both writers further this binary between human and machine, between male and female, yet interweaving infinitely. Just like computers and machines imitate behavior, gender is also constructed on a learned behavior that we come to imitate.
Brograms and #Femfuture Reading Response
I think Hicks brings up a very good point that we shouldn’t take lightly the perception of others simply because we think that they aren’t the majority or that these brogrammer’s output isn’t significant. Stereotyping is exactly what has caused this gender difference and people’ s perception need to be changed, not left alone. It’s sad that even today we are surrounded by these stereotypes and how engineering and computer science jobs are mostly comprised of men. Hicks is right though, jobs and activities have been feminine and masculine code and it would seem out of the norm for others to see one stepping into the territory of another. Only a couple years ago, male nurses would have been a very weird thing to people but now it’s totally normal. I think these perceptions can be changed with time.
In class today we talked about online activism and I feel these articles we read are a good example of how even if they aren’t out there protesting they are spreading feminism in another way. Teaching others about what’s going on and spreading awareness is important because the people you are spreading these issues to might be able to go out there and protest and do something about it physically even if you yourself can’t. For example Hicks talks about the hashtags on twitter surrounding women’s advancement in STEM fields. It may not seem significant that they are hashtagging thesse terms but someone out there might wonder why something like #changetheratio is trending and might decide to look up the issue.
I think Dzodan brings up a good point that even within feminism there is this separation between what people hope to gain due to their upbringing and the environment around them. Women from one country are experiencing totally different inequalities compared to women from another country. There may be overlapping concerns that are central but there are still a lot of issues that are ignored to the area being more isolated. For example the United States is a lot more vocal and the concerns of women from the United States are probably heard a lot more compared to a small developing country. It shows how we have to take the bigger picture of feminism and break it down so that we can address different issues. I think online feminism may be key for communication between women in different countries to share their different concerns.
Reminder: In-person meeting tonight, 10/17
Just a reminder that we will meet in person tonight at our regular time and place, 6:00-7:30 in 3N. Looking forward to it.
Technology Diary – 10/17
As these readings have shown, short hashtags can go a long way. For that reason I will be writing about how Twitter has been both campaigning for women online and impeding them at the same time.
Within Marie Hicks’ discussion of the evolution of coding from a feminine to masculine coding in “Brograms and the Power of Vaporware,” she brings up Twitter networks forming around the hashtags #changetheratio and #onereasonwhy. These hashtag campaigns bring up the gap between men and women in the technology industry. In addition, Courtney E. Martin and Vanessa Valenti’s paper #FemFuture: Online Revolution opened up discussion for taking up on the momentum that is mobilizing the online feminist world. Hashtags allow all these discussions to be easily found on Twitter, with each user getting a stage to speak their mind in 140 characters or less (or more if they write multiple tweets). Hashtags have helped conversations get started, especially when an injustice is brought up and the online feminist world becomes enraged. For example, earlier this year #Steubenbille (and currently reflected in #Justice4Daisy) brought up the conversation of injustice that a young girl is slut-shamed for getting raped while the male rapist is glorified for being a high school football star who cannot do any wrong.
However, hashtags can create the opposite situation, even amongst feminists. This is evidenced by Flavia Dzodan’s “US Centrism and Inhabiting a Non-Space in #femfuture.” Judith Butler’s discussion of labels being “instruments of regulatory regimes” comes into play here as Dzodan believes that the label #femfuture creates an inclusion of white, American-centric women while it excludes women of color and non-American. Additionally, many trending topics on Twitter tend to be sexist and misogynist [See examples here]. Fortunately, it seems that the online community of feminists is always live to fight off these trends!
Technology Diary 4: Clinical trials and the Fertility Industry
With all the technological advances happening everyday, people can live healthier and longer lives. This also means that women can have babies later in life and put their careers first and not be bound by nature. Women who cannot have their own biological children can still enjoy raising a family. Those with the means now have more options to select for the embryo that has the best chance of survival or better quality of life. I can appreciate the conveniences that these medical advances offer but upon further investigation, several issues come to my mind.
With the clinical testing, there come many key issues. The institutional Review board exists to ensure that there is no “coercion”, that the women joined the study on their own accord. However, by making compensations so high, many women are swayed by all they could do with that money and they do not think about the long-term consequences. Yes, they are making an important contribution to science and their peers when they donate eggs but who decides these prices? How can something as personal as a woman’s egg be placed on the capital market? But, there is a very real demand, both for knowledge and offspring, which keeps the fertility industry in business. Nor can these risks be explained with any sense of accuracy because the risks are still largely unknown. IVF treatments and other modes of fertility treatments have not been around long enough to know how these procedures affect the body. Many egg donors have experiences lower fertility rates when they are ready to have their own children, starting menopause earlier, and various forms of cancer including ovarian, colon and breast cancers. To ready their bodies to undergo egg donation, women must take large doses of hormones and putting these chemicals in their bodies and messing with the natural order of things has repercussions somewhere down the line. And there are so few IVF regulations in place that women do not know what happens to the eggs that do not get fertilized and get placed into the womb. These can and usually are used for research, which was not the original intention.
Reading for 10/17
This week’s readings are in the syllabus, but here they are for handy clicking:
Femfuture at Barnard
Femfuture, Redlight Politics
Femfuture Storify
I’d also like to look at #solidarityisforwhiteowomen and here and feel free to comment on this post with more.
Let’s also look at what happened to Danielle Lee last week:
